


The World Is Wrong

by Duck_Life



Category: X-Factor (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Mental Health Issues, Past Character Death, Suicide, Team as Family, X-Factor Investigations, au where rictor dies in xfi #2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-09 22:00:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17413529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: If this were a comic one-shot it would be called "What If... Julio Richter Had Died?"Shatterstar returns to Earth only to learn the devastating news that Rictor has killed himself.  He tries to find where he fits in now, both on X-Factor and in the world.





	The World Is Wrong

“Guido,  _ stop it _ !” Terry hollers as their assailant crashes through the wall. He gets right back up again, though, swords at the ready. “That’s Shatterstar. He’s one of ours. Or he was, at least.” 

Shatterstar attacks, moving ferociously and senselessly, not the fine-tuned warrior she remembers from their X-Force days. A sonic scream knocks him back but doesn’t stop him, and she and Guido have to work together just to keep him from getting a hit in. 

And then, by some miracle, he stops struggling. He stops fighting, just crumples to the ground. Terry panics, worried that either Cortex cut his cord and killed him or that she did, somehow, that she caused brain damage with that last scream. 

But it’s okay. Shatterstar tilts upward, looking up at her blearily. “Theresa?”

“Aye, Shatty, it’s me,” she says. “It’ll be alright, okay? Yer safe now.” She hasn’t heard from him in years, and seeing him under Cortex’s control is terrifying. This is him now, the real him. She’s sure of it, even more sure when Shatterstar swoops toward her and wraps her in a tight hug. Terry responds in kind, squeezing her old friend back.

* * *

In the car, Terry turns around and watches Shatterstar dozing in the backseat. “Ya sure we can trust ’im?” Guido asks for the third time. “He tried to kill us. A bunch. I don’ wanna bring ’im back to homebase just so he can go nuts again and kill Monet or Madrox or—”

“He’s fine,” Terry assures him, but she keeps her eyes on Shatterstar. “Fine” means “not going to kill them.” It doesn’t really mean  _ fine _ . “I told ye, he was being controlled by Cortex, but he’s himself now.”

“Yeah, well…” But Guido doesn’t finish his sentence, because some kid tries to jump off the interpass bridge. Guido swerves into the other lane and stretches an arm out the window to catch him. 

“Wh-who are you?” the kid asks, voice shaking.

“I’m your guardian angel,” Guido grunts. “She’s Lucky the Leprechaun.”

“Fuck you, Guido.”

“Don’t try this again or we’ll come back and kick your butt,” Guido promises, tossing the kid onto the side of the road. Maybe, whoever he is, he’ll take tonight as a sign and go back home, get himself right. 

Terry starts thinking about Rictor and her stomach sours, and of course, that’s when Shatterstar wakes up.  “Hey, man,” she says, twisting around in her seat to smile at him. “How’re ye feelin’? Is anything clearer?”

“I’m afraid not,” he says, tipping his head back against the seat. “I had traveled back to my own world, my own time, only to find things there changed. And  _ not _ for the better. Various things happened there. Too much to go into at the moment.” 

Terry’s glad of that. From what she remembers about Mojoworld, it’s not something she wants to hear details about. “But yer back now,” she points out.

“Yes,” he says, his face brightening. “Until I encountered Cortex, I was on my way back here because… well, honestly… because of Rictor.” 

Guido makes a noise, sucking air through his teeth uncomfortably, and Terry just tries to keep her expression neutral. “You were?” she says. Shatterstar’s not a telepath but she still finds herself trying to force down thoughts of news cameras, flashing lights, blood on concrete. A ledge in Mutant Town covered in flowers. 

“Yes,” Shatterstar says, his voice taking on a wistful tone that just about shatters Terry’s heart. “I just… my thoughts kept returning to him. To our… friendship. It meant a great deal to me.” 

“Aw, fuck,” Guido says quietly, hunched over the steering wheel. He just keeps driving, eyes straight ahead, but Terry can tell from the set of his jaw that he’s just as upset. 

“Pull over,” she says. Guido shakes his head. “ _ Pull over _ .” He grumbles but turns, pulling up onto the shoulder before putting the car in park. 

“What is it?” Shatterstar asks, looking between them. “What’s wrong?” 

Terry opens the car door and steps out, slamming it behind her before opening the backseat door and climbing into the bench seat beside Shatterstar. “Honey, there’s something you need to know,” she says carefully, putting her hands near his but not touching them. Shatterstar’s strange about being touched sometimes, and she doesn’t want to overwhelm him. 

He takes her hands. “I don’t understand,” he says. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Rictor,” she says, and she can tell that Guido’s in the front looking away but listening closely to every word. “He—” 

“Is he alright?” Shatterstar says quickly, his eyebrows raised in concern. “Did Cortex hurt him? Or did… did  _ I  _ do something— ?”

“No, no, not that,” Terry says, and then she’s crying and she can’t stop it. Shatterstar brings a hand up to wipe away her tears and that just gets her crying harder. “Honey, he… h-he died. A few months ago. Rictor’s gone.” 

Shatterstar’s face twitches. He flinches like he's been slapped. “Julio is dead,” he says quietly, not making it a question.

* * *

Shatterstar joins the team, fighting demons and Norse gods and Dr. Doom, solving mysteries alongside old friends and new faces alike. And despite the yawning chasm in his chest that comes with Julio’s absence, Julio’s  _ death _ , he finds a sort of home here. Falls into a comfortable pattern, forms a rhythm.

He has his own room with his own bed, and he can choose to put up posters and pictures of his friends. He watches television with Rahne and Layla and Darwin, and he learns how to live with the ache of grief, how to grow from it, how to build from it. It happens slowly, and painfully, but it does happen. 

Shatterstar enjoys talking to Jamie Madrox, enjoys the way the other man can prattle and prattle and fill up the silence so Shatterstar doesn’t have to think of something to say or be alone with his thoughts. He likes when Jamie recommends TV shows for him to watch or comic books to read. 

He gets to know Monet, as well, someone he met only briefly while she was on Generation X. He likes shopping with her and playing chess. In many ways, she is similar to him— she hates the same food he hates, and she has almost as much trouble discerning social cues as he does. It’s nice to find someone dealing with challenges similar to his own. 

Longshot is on the team, as well. In his time away from Earth, Shatterstar learned more about what connects the two of them. They don’t just share a planet of origin; they are family. To what extent, Shatterstar doesn’t know, doesn’t know if they are brothers or distant relatives, or something else entirely. 

More important than whatever genetic data they share is the background they share. Both slaves, both forced to perform for the entertainment of the Spineless Ones. Longshot understands him in a way no one else in this universe does, and it’s nice to have someone like that, especially now that he is without Julio, his most stalwart anchor. 

And yet, despite all the good things he can count in his life, Shatterstar still finds himself scratching and scratching at the big question:  _ Why _ ? Why would Rictor take his own life? Why could he not go on living after the loss of his powers? 

Shatterstar knew him well, knew his stubbornness and pride and pain. And he cannot understand why Julio would have done what he did. 

He resolves to get answers, one way or another.

* * *

The rift opens and Longshot and Shatterstar spill onto the ledge, standing in the shadow of Rictor’s last moments. “Let's just go,” Longshot insists, tugging at his arm. Longshot and Terry are the only ones on the team who can touch him like this, hug him, pull him aside, without making Shatterstar flinch away.

But he flinches away now. 

“No, no, I need you to  _ tell me _ ,” he says, stalking back and forth across the stone ledge. “Need to know, need you to  _ see _ him, and tell me.” 

“Shatterstar,” Longshot says flatly. “This will not make you feel better.”

“I don't care,” he says stubbornly. “I do not care. I need… I need to know what he was thinking.  _ Fekt.  _ How could he… ? Why did he do this?” 

“I don't know.”

“That is why I brought you here,” Shatterstar pleads. “ _ You  _ can tell me.” He looks down at the stone beneath his feet. “Touch what he touched. See what he saw.”

So Longshot leans down and touches the ledge, watches the last moments of Julio Richter’s life play out like a scene in a movie. 

What he sees makes his hearts break.

* * *

Layla Miller is standing in his way when Shatterstar marches into X-Factor headquarters, but he sweeps her away as though she isn’t even there. “Madrox,” he snarls between bared teeth, moving through the room like a tank with Longshot trailing helplessly after him. “Madrox!”

Jamie steps out of the kitchen, looking only mildly alarmed and not at all surprised. He doesn’t even flinch when Shatterstar grabs him by the neck and slams him back into the wall, creating a couple of dupes that stand off to the side, watching the show. 

“I want the copy,” Shatterstar says, fury and pain in every line of his face. One of his swords extends from his left hand and he holds the blades up close to Jamie’s face. “I want the copy that killed Julio. Do not hide him from me.” He pulls back and slams Jamie into the wall again, creating three more dupes. The room’s starting to get crowded. 

“He’s already dead,” Jamie says, not shouting, not matching Shatterstar’s anger. He just looks mournfully acceptant, not even fighting back. “He died, not long after that night. Blew himself up.” Shatterstar’s shoulders heave as he breathes in and out, fathoming that. “But if you still want to kill me, I understand.” 

“Madrox!” Layla hisses, but he shakes his head, still looking at Shatterstar. 

“I didn’t want it to happen,” Jamie says, losing his calm for the first time since Shatterstar entered the room. There are tears in his eyes, shame and guilt and regret spilling over. “Before, I… I would’ve said there wasn’t any part of me that could  _ do _ that, but now I know that— that— he wasn’t  _ me _ , but he was. And he just… and me, I sent him down there, I  _ trusted _ him. It’s my fault. So…” He meets Shatterstar’s eyes. “So, like I said, if you’re going to kill me just do it.”

Shatterstar is quiet. “You did not want to,” he says carefully. 

“Jesus, of course not,” Jamie says. “Rictor was my friend. I never wanted any of this to happen.”

“You did not want to,” Shatterstar repeats. “I have… have killed, before, without wanting to.” His hands relax finally, moving away from Jamie’s neck. The sword in his left hand retracts and his right hand moves down, hovering over Jamie’s chest. His heart. “Hurts."

“Yeah,” Jamie agrees, wrung out and crying in earnest now. “Every day.” The dupes watch on, calmer now that it seems the Prime is no longer in immediate danger of being killed. “Ric was my  _ friend _ . And… and I  _ remember _ pushing him. The dupe is dead but I still have the memories and I see it happen again every fucking day and I  _ can't _ …” He sobs drily, not even caring that Layla and Longshot are watching. 

He can't be a hard-boiled noir detective because he never was, it was always a mask. It was always a scam. First it was a scam to cover up his indecision and insecurity, and then it became a scam to hide from the fact that a version of himself  _ killed Julio Richter _ . He's not a hero, he can't be, not if that's true. 

Shatterstar looks at the M branded over Jamie’s eye. “The world is wrong,” he says finally. “The world is wrong without Julio in it.”

“Yeah.” Jamie bobs his head. 

Shatterstar bites his lip, thinking. “We can fix it?”

“We can’t fix it,” one of the dupes says, finally speaking up.

“We’re fucked,” a second dupe says.

“Guys, that's not true,” another one disagrees. “If we do one thing every day for one person, and it makes their day better, that all builds up. And eventually the world starts to look like a nice place again.”

“Would you get a load of Mr. Rogers?” dupe number four snickers. 

“No, no, he's right,” Jamie says, looking from Shatterstar to the optimistic dupe and back. “That's what we're here for. We reunite families, we recover stolen property. That's why we solve mysteries. Not because it's fucking  _ noir _ . Not because it makes  _ us _ feel any better. But it makes  _ one person _ ,  _ one day  _ feel better. That's worth it.”

Shatterstar stares at him for a long moment, and then he nods. The fight ebbs out of him, all the anger and rage, drawn out and replaced with quiet. With grief. “I miss him,” he says finally. 

“I know,” Jamie says, but he doesn't really  _ know _ , and he's aware of that. He can't  _ know _ , because nobody else in the universe loved Rictor the way Shatterstar did. “I’m s—” He stops. He wants to say, “I'm sorry,” but it means something different coming from him. How can he give condolences when it’s all his fault anyway? And how can he apologize?

Shatterstar doesn't seem to care about the nuances. “I forgive you,” he says, staring at the ground and not at Jamie. “Forgive  _ you _ ,” he adds, because he is not talking to the five Madroxes standing around him and he is not talking to the memory of the Madrox who pushed Rictor.

He is talking to the man he has fought beside, and investigated with. To his friend.

* * *

Shatterstar stays on with X-Factor Investigations, but after that terrible night he starts working on a new project. A new business, located in the remains of Mutant Town, one that he wants to function as pro-bono as possible. He hires psychology students coming out of grad school, convinces Monet and his old friend Roberto da Costa to invest.

Shatterstar will never understand why one of Jamie Madrox’s duplicates felt compelled to push Rictor off the ledge.

But he thinks he might understand how Rictor ended up on that ledge in the first place. And if there’s a chance that he can keep someone else like Rictor from a similar situation, he’s going to take that chance. 

Soon, the paperwork is all filed, the licenses obtained. Shatterstar makes sure there are mutant therapists on staff, ones who understand what it is like to lose your powers, ones who understand what it’s like to live with powers you feel you can’t control. 

No matter how he got here, this is his world now. This is his community. And he has filled in one of the gaps in it. 

The plaque on the side of the building reads,  _ The Julio Esteban Richter Counseling Center _ . 


End file.
